Stanley Cup tickets stir wheeling and dealing

Jessica Raye is one of those fortunate Chicago Blackhawks fans who snagged a pair of tickets to a Stanley Cup game at the United Center. She bought them Monday for $525 each through a friend of a friend who is a season ticket holder.

Now Raye plans to sell the $348 ticket she bought through the Hawks' online sale last week to recoup part of her costs. She'll also cut a few days from her summer vacation to make the plan work.

"Chicago sports fans know they have to seize the moment," said Raye, 28, of Elburn. "Yes, it's crazy, but this could be one of those once-in-a-lifetime things."

Perhaps thousands of Hawks fans, some of whom are looking to monetize their ticket investments, face similar complications while they consider the championship series, which begins Wednesday night at the United Center, where the Hawks meet the Boston Bruins. Tickets in the resale market are in high demand, and slightly fewer than 2,000 — about 10 percent of United Center's capacity — were available Monday afternoon.

Prices start at nearly $290 each for standing-room-only spots and end at nearly $9,400 for a front-row seat behind and slightly to the side of a goal. Those rates include an eye-popping, slightly mysterious service charge on the National Hockey League's official resale outlet, NHL Ticket Exchange, that runs as high as $1,875 for the top-end ticket.

The prices, which will rise as the series continues, have brought out some innovative thinking in ticket acquisition.

Like Carlos Olivares' approach. To Olivares, 26, of Des Plaines, viewing the Blackhawks at the United Center trumps the latest tech gadgetry.

That's why he posted an ad on Craigslist, the grand bazaar of the Internet, offering to swap his new 64GB iPad for two tickets to Game 5.

Olivares said he paid $525 for the tablet in February — a purchase that swallowed nearly his entire tax refund — but is willing to part with it for a ticket in any section of the United Center where he can sit.

Craigslist is buzzing with ads from people looking to trade everything from wedding photography service to Lollapalooza tickets for passes to Games 1 or 2.

Among those is Massachusetts-based Hawks fan Antonio Fierro, who said over the phone Monday that he missed the Stanley Cup three years ago because he was in school in South Florida and didn't have the money to travel.

A year after finishing his master's degree, the 26-year-old lives in Boston and still can't afford the ticket prices. But he is determined to attend a game at Boston's TD Garden. So Monday, he took to Craigslist and Twitter, offering his apartment in exchange for a ticket.

Given the city's hotel prices, Fierro figured that he and a traveling Hawks fan might be able to strike a mutually beneficial deal.

"I'm beyond broke," he wrote in the ad, "but I have a comfortable, cozy apartment to offer while you stay here that is a 3-minute train ride from downtown. You can have as much Ramen as you'd like at my apartment, or play as much NHL '09 as your heart desires (did I mention that I'm broke?)."

NHL Ticket Exchange, which cautions fans about buying tickets from unsecured sites, reported that the average resale ticket price of those that had sold was $678.

Season ticket holders who hope to make up part of their investment in next year's subscription are selling some of those tickets, said Jenn Swanson, spokeswoman for Ticketmaster, which runs NHL Ticket Exchange.

Those fans also set the price, said Swanson, who added that a friend earned back half of his season ticket subscription for next year by selling tickets to this year's playoffs.

"We have savvy fans out there who understand that this is a hot market," she added.

Ticketmaster is reluctant to discuss details of the service charge, which is added to a $4.95-per-ticket delivery and handling fee. Two spokeswomen for the business explained only that part of the service charge pays the cost of running NHL Ticket Exchange.

Brad Lash took a look at those prices and decided that he most likely will be absent from the United Center seats during the Stanley Cup, a predicament that leaves him "conflicted."

A successful college graduate who works in Web design, Lash, 33, of Chicago, has seen his salary rise but the number of games he views at the United Center shrink. He said he used to attend 10 to 12 games a season. This year, Lash said, he has been unable to attend a game at the United Center.

He's a little bitter, especially since he was skunked in an attempt to score Stanley Cup standing-room-only tickets in the Hawks online sale.